


Hunting the Wren

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Animal Metaphors, Character Study, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-10
Updated: 2014-03-10
Packaged: 2018-01-15 05:55:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1293814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lestrade on the inner Mycroft--the one we only see glimpses of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hunting the Wren

Mycroft Holmes melted against Lestrade, the tension easing from his body until he seemed boneless as a sleeping cat. He bent his neck and pressed his face against the side of Lestrade’s head, nuzzling the short, crisp hair behind his ear. He sighed—a soft, contented, gentle little sound. For once he sounded young, and vulnerable, and undone.

Lestrade was charmed—could not have been more so if a wild bird had landed on his palm to eat seed in a little postage stamp of a London front garden, behind cast iron fencing. He raised a hand and stroked the back of Mycroft’s neck. He was rewarded with another sigh, and a breathy giggle. One corner of his mouth quirked up.

He’d been waiting for this. Practically praying for it, though he wasn’t even halfway to pious. In spite of that, he could actually remember moments of expressing something to himself that was more prayer than mere wish: for Mycroft Holmes to trust this aspect of himself to Greg’s keeping.

oOo

He’d seen the first hint of this Mycroft, to his complete amazement, during a meeting between Mycroft, Lestrade, and Sherlock, as they reviewed London’s terror status, years ago. That night, in a planning room deep under Thames House, all of them clacking away at keyboards and tossing each other links and comments, Sherlock had said something to his elder brother. Lestrade had never even been sure what—the words had been said before his attention was caught by Mycroft’s response.

The man’s usually controlled, austere expression had dissipated like smoke on the breeze, replaced by a sparkling-eyed, mischievous urchin—a shy Puck barely holding back a sweet and uncalculated smile. He’d responded to Sherlock’s sally with a single word—something entirely enigmatic to Lestrade; apparently a shared reference known only to the two brothers. Sherlock had honked out some horrified response, the wild little pixy-Mycroft had chuckled—and disappeared again, back into the sober, focused mandarin of power Lestrade knew and expected.

Lestrade was no naïf. He knew perfectly well that people wore masks, and that the “real” personalities were far more complex than the public façade might indicate. That Mycroft Holmes, of all people, should prove to be a layered, intricate man was hardly a surprise. Lestrade had seen squalling infants hiding behind murdering bastards; sultry seductresses coiling, serpentine, behind the eyes of respectable, grandmotherly matrons. The surprise wasn’t that Mycroft wasn’t restricted to the reserved, intense professional Lestrade had worked with for some years. The surprise was that the hidden Mycroft was something so sweet and wild and delicate—and that the fetching gamin came out for Sherlock, of all people!

For Sherlock, demon-prince of tantrums—savage cutter of egos down to size. Abuser of anyone too slow and lumbering to escape his vitriol.

Lestrade contemplated it on and off for weeks afterward, studying both brothers when he worked with either—Mycroft in the offices of MI5 and MI6, Sherlock more often on site in Met murder investigations.

It had to be a brothers-thing, he decided, eventually—as so much between those two men was, in spite of their mutual attempts to act like hostile strangers tied only by professional obligations. Not that he pretended to understand them—not either of them. Two more fey, impossible creatures he was hard put to imagine. That didn’t stop him, though, from becoming a patient observer, waiting to catch either Holmes Boy in a moment of unprotected openness.

Sherlock was the easier by far. Not only did Lestrade see more of him, in time Lestrade realized that Sherlock was _loud_ —physically, socially, emotionally. Not by any means clear, or easily comprehended, but you couldn’t miss the melodramatic bellows, the brooding, silent mopes, the acid tantrums, the anguished howls. Sherlock was a one-man soap opera, the dramatic equivalent of a one-man-band. Where the one-man band played harmonica and horn and drum and accordion and on and on and on, Sherlock played the entire cast of his own private soap—the ingénues and rascals, the social divas and dirty dogs—and played them all with gusto.

Mycroft was a harder bird to spot—and Lestrade did come to think of it as a sort of odd bird-watching. Mycroft himself was a tall, stately man—ginger, with a prominent beak of a nose, a receding hairline, shoulders that were strong and straight, but narrow, and the longest legs in proportion to his body that Lestrade thought he’d ever seen without being freakish. Sherlock suffered no lack of leg, but Mycroft’s seemed to start two thirds of the way up his body and go on and on and on in one long, elegant line.

Mycroft had posture like London had traffic—in vast excess. He apparently bought his dignity in bulk industrial bins. If Lestrade were to equate the outer man with a bird, it would be a long, leggy heron or ibis wading decorously in shallow waters, head high until the very second of a strike—then down in a flash and up, and some poor prey would be sliding down the long, graceful neck without even having had time to say “eep.”

The inner Mycroft, though—

Lestrade had spent time in the West Counties as a boy—time sitting in his Gran’s back garden, watching the birds flit and fly. Robins. Jays. Tits. Best of all had been the wee wrens: fleet and shy, energetic, tails bobbing, ever-alert. Lestrade’s Gran’s neighbor had told him about the wren: the kinglet, the winter king—king of all birds by cleverness. Former sacrifice; current excuse for a nice bit of midwinter begging and a good party after on St. Stephen’s Day. The shy, quiet bird who won by trickery, survived by disguise and hidden ways, and yet seemed ever busy and merry when seen at all.

That, to Lestrade’s infinite amusement, was the bird hidden inside sober, businesslike Mycroft Holmes. A wee tail-flipping jester, shy and hard to spot, but a bloody wonder when you did see him.

His appearances were rare, and had become precious to Lestrade over the years. The Wren would come out briefly…and only when he thought he was alone, or with a very few people he seemed to trust in some way. Sherlock was the most likely recipient of an appearance. Once Lestrade knew what to watch for, he learned to see the Wren peek out of mist-blue eyes, teasing his baby brother before slipping back into the shadows. Sometimes the Wren came out for that sleek vixen of a PA of Mycroft’s: for one swift moment the shy bird would be there, saying something snarky and flashing the woman one of those stunning, sweet smiles. Then he’d be gone, and Mycroft would be back, all dignity again.

Once, in a moment Lestrade cherished privately for the rest of his life, he saw Mycroft walking wearily across the damp concrete of an underground car park, only to come across a whisper-thin stream of water draining across a low-point in the paving. In a sudden flutter of silent laughter, he saw the Wren pop out, glance quickly both ways—failing to spot Lestrade in the shadows of the lift bay—then give a skip and a hop over the stream like an Irish step-dancer trying out for a revival of _Riverdance_. The skirt of his slim, formal coat had flipped out, showing a flash of royal blue lining. Then he’d been on the other side. He’d straightened his coat, tucked his leather portfolio case under his arm, and stalked away—but far less wearily than before that brief, wren-like bob across the little rill.

Lestrade couldn’t for the life of him say why, years before he and Mycroft became close, that little hidden Wren inside the great, stately man of civil affairs so charmed him. It was more than the contrast: Lestrade thought he’d have adored that little wild bird even if Mycroft himself had been as short as John Watson, as scatty as Mrs. Hudson, and as goony as Anderson. Who could help but love the shy little thing, all bright eyes and brown feathers and bounce?

And then things changed, as things will, and Lestrade found himself in love with the outer Heron in all his doleful sobriety, as well as the tricky little Wren—and God, he loved the Heron beyond all madness. The silly fool who courted him with clueless uncertainty, rocketing back and forth between autocratic organization only a fool like Lestrade could love to complete stuttering hesitation, which Lestrade found he also adored. The unholy, inspired terror who caused heads of state around the world to break out in cold sweats. The MI6 mastermind who kept Great Britain a real force for good long after dear old Blighty had ceased to be operating in her proper weight category. Lestrade loved the man: all steel and satin and tailored bespoke and brilliance.

But he never broke faith with the Wren…and he prayed, silently, that someday Mycroft would trust Lestrade with that hidden, secret self: the wild feyling spirit that hid behind the danger and the disguises.

oOo

Mycroft nuzzled Lestrade’s ear again, then, quick and shy, nipped his earlobe, chuckling a chuckle so small it wouldn’t have been audible if it hadn’t been inches away from Lestrade’s eardrum. Long fingers gave a flashing tug to Lestrade’s lapels, and a voice soaked in smiles said, “Come here, you.”

“Already here,” Lestrade murmured back, smiling. He slipped a finger upward, tucking it under Mycroft’s chin. “Budge up, love. Let me see you.”

Mycroft drew back a few inches. “Far enough?”

“Another inch or two. Age is wrecking my depth perception like you would not believe.  There. Better.” Lestrade looked into his lover’s face. He smiled, then.

The merry Wren looked at him out of mist-blue eyes. Mycroft’s entire face was relaxed and alight with laughter and love—the puckish imp Lestrade had first spotted years before. Lestrade literally gasped with the delight of it.

“God, love. It’s so good to see you like this.”

“Like what?” Mycroft asked, chuckling. “Human, for a change?”

“Not…exactly.” He smiled and dropped a kiss on Mycroft’s mouth, then murmured against his lips, “Just you, love—looking free as a bird and merry.”

**Author's Note:**

> I think it's easy to spot the Heron in Mycroft. The Wren may be less obvious, as he only peeks out rarely, when Mark Gatiss allows it--but that shy, pixy-boy delights me. You can see him [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxJ6hVeKgd8), hopping off his treadmill, and flickering in and out of all the conversation with Sherlock that follows, perhaps most obviously when Mycroft attempts to explain his shortness of breath as being the result of "filing." Or you can see it...
> 
> Oh, fiddle. Really, you can see the Wren popping about all OVER season 3. In the garden smoking cigarettes. In Mycroft's office being smug and a bit too twelve-for-words about knowing where John is. Squabbling, playing operation, and the Deduction Game. The Wren is who sneaks out when Mycroft stops hiding so hard behind his Mycroft mask. My own theory is that the Wren's the person who hides at the Diogenes, because he feels safe there. The Heron is who he sends stalking the Halls of Power outside the Diogenes.
> 
> And while The Heron's theme music is all somber and brooding and a bit of a cross between Tubular Bells and Carmina Burana/O Fortuna, [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyA1zKBUhxM) is The Wren's theme: much merrier, more mischievous, and childlike.


End file.
